


we learn how to miss

by lokidreamsinbw



Category: Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: IW SPOILERS, M/M, Thor misses Loki, bittersweet IDK, post IW, thor will never stop looking for his brother
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 17:12:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14573685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokidreamsinbw/pseuds/lokidreamsinbw
Summary: Thor missed Loki all his life, even when he was with him. Now he misses him even more.





	we learn how to miss

**Author's Note:**

> Was sent a lovely tumblr prompt "i miss you" and this is the result.

Loki, I remember you telling me once how much you miss the stars when the sun is out. _All that blue_ you said, _you can’t see their craters, you can’t see their ghostly light._

You were sad and I thought you childish, impatient.

I laughed and said to you _it’s not real this feeling, you can’t miss the stars for they reappear every night._

The look you gave me. I’ll never forget it. Sadness beyond your years.

 

 

You learn how to miss. It takes time.

First, it’s missing things.

Then, it’s missing people.

At last it’s missing the times when you thought you knew what missing someone feels like, you miss your innocence regarding just how much pain you thought a heart can take.

 

 

Our parents, we miss first. It’s their eyes we see when we take our first breaths and it’s their eyes we seek when they are not with us. I remember missing father whenever he’d go on one diplomatic mission or another. I’d linger by the window for days, chin in hand, and I’d think of you telling me about missing the stars and I’d think foolish Loki and his faraway imaginary worlds, he thinks he knows, but he doesn’t, how can he?

 

 

As the years went by, I started missing you, too.

My confidence in you always being with me was fading and my not being able to understand why nor to restore it somehow, brought it on.

To me, you became a door left ajar, an empty chair out on the balcony, a shadowy sheet, a discarded book, an uneaten apple catching the light in a glass bowl, a path undulating between whispering summer trees.

 

 

I missed you.

 

I missed you when you were gone.

 

I missed you when you were with me.

 

I missed you because it felt like fall wind shaking a leaf as the tree it grows from watches with bated breath, fearing the break and the inevitable flutter moving farther and farther away from it.

 

I missed the things you gave me over the years, the things I failed to keep—a twig that resembled a lizard’s tail; a part of a page that has fallen out of one of your music books; an old Asgardian coin bearing on it an engraving of the apples of youth.

 

I missed the things you’ve said, all the words I did not pay attention to for my child’s mind was elsewhere, too preoccupied for the senseless musings of my little brother as I’ve believed them to be at the time. I thought maybe you told me about a dream you’ve had,  a dream of a frozen land with a single dark tree growing from it, its sharp branches encased in sparkling ice. I thought maybe you’ve whispered in my ear about a secret path you’ve found that leads to a terrace in our palace which everyone has forgotten about, where the floor has orange leaves as its tiles, and there are wicker chairs there and an empty pitcher filled with small pink buds the wind has picked from the spring trees. A place to daydream in.

 

 

My childhood was a reality of missing you.

I never said anything about it. How could I?

How can you miss a person when you have their hands in yours, their body in your arms?

 _Foolish Thor_ , I thought you’d say to me, _I thought you didn’t believe in missing._

So many things I should have told you.

 

 

*

I miss you now.

I thought I knew what it feels like but I didn’t.

See, when we’re little, we think our home is the world. Each room is a separate land to us. It’s the only thing we know.

 

As we start growing older we realize it was a world within a world all along. And we start to think the planet we’re on is all there is, with its oceans and deserts and changing seasons but we still marvel at its vastness, we feel small again.

 

But then we discover space and we shake our heads and smile because we realize we were wrong all along.

 

Missing you before was easier. It was empty rooms and windy hallways, a pair of shoes by the door, a latch on the garden’s gates, undone.

 

Missing you now is harder. It’s light chasing shadows on sidewalks when yours is gone, it’s rain coming down hard on a golden field where your eyes can’t see it, it’s untraveled roads where the pines listen for the tread of your boots, swaying in the echoing silence.

 

Before, you’d be gone from my side but I’d know you’re out there somewhere, awaiting the sound of approaching footfalls, one of the palace guards, to come and tell you to follow him, for dinner is served.

 

 

It’s different now.

 

 

When my eyes search for you, they do not flutter over lands and distance anymore; they move upwards, follow the pattern of the softly glowing stars.

And I find myself thinking are you sitting there amongst them. And I think maybe you were one of them all along, a prince made of silver light and silence, and when they called for you to join them for they missed you so, you went?

*

 

 

I’ve missed you.

 

I miss you.

 

Would it surprise you to hear me say that I will miss you forever?

 

 

 

*


End file.
